Sunday, 22 August 2010

This is a very easily and speedily concocted dish and is common in Bologna even if not totally native. While the pasta is cooking you can prepare the sauce. The cheese will melt into the pasta but all the sauce ingredients should remain distinct. The combination is sublime, a combination of salty, creamy, crunchy and sweet. If you or your guests are allergic to walnuts, substitute slivered almonds lightly fried in butter. There is no substitute for the gorgonzola.

Cooking hints: This is one of those occasions when you should buy the fresh pasta if it is available. Dry garganelli isn’t always made with egg, as it should be.

1. Grill the bacon until crisp and then snip into thin pieces with scissors, or serve as a slice.
2. Put the pasta on to boil.
3. Peel and dice the pears. Shell the walnuts. Cut the gorgonzola into dice.
Drain the cooked pasta and briefly combine with the rest of the ingredients in the pan.
Serve each portion as a mound with the bacon on top, as a slice or in pieces.
That’s it.

Wine match: how about Rosato Letizia, made by Letizia Gaggioli at Zola Predosa? Or, failing that, a full bodied rose like Villa Maria, made from the syrah grape?

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Bologna and Bolognese food - raising the profile

Taste for Bologna has been named blog of the month by BBC food magazine, Olive. They say it's a 'useful source of top local knowledge for anyone travelling to the Bologna region...Lovely recipes too'.

This blog was also chosen by the Guardian as one of the best city travel blogs. They described it as A great foodie blog by two people who love eating: where to eat fabulous food when you are there and how to cook the food when you get home. And all with luscious photos.

Taste Italia has just published our quick guide to eating, drinking, shopping and sleeping in Bologna. And we regularly feature in the new on-line food and drink magazine, The Foodie Bugle.

Bologna's popularity as a destination has risen sharply recently. Now it has been voted one of the top 10 European food cities by tens of thousands of travellers who use Trip Advisor every week for advice on where to go and what to eat. Not surprising really; everybody who goes to Bologna comes away an enthusiast for the sophisticated charms of Italy's most food-mad city. As Claudia Roden says, 'The people of Emilia-Romagna eat more, care more and talk more about food than anyone else in Italy'.

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Spaghetti bolognese? Or is it tagliatelle al ragu?

This blog is a foodie tour of Bologna with recipes gleaned from my favourite restaurants and home cooks. For serious fans of Italian food and cookery, the city has two great attractions. It has Italy's best regional cuisine - in the view of most Italians (in their more dispassionate moments) - and it has the most enthusastic eating culture. It also has a glorious cityscape, with miles of orange-red coloured porticos and an unspoilt historic centre, a perfect backdrop to good food. People outside Italy vaguely recognise the appeal of Bologna - they relish spag bol, lasagne, parmesan and balsamic - but it rarely figures in their travel plans.

As Elizabeth David wrote in Italian Food, ' Everyone has heard of the mortadella sausage of Bologna, but how many hurrying motorists drive past the rose and ochre coloured arcades of Bologna quite unaware that behind modest doorways are some of the best restaurants in Italy'.

Fine, nobody wants Bologna to be swamped with tourists like Florence and Rome, pushing up prices and diluting quality.

Now, if you don't want to or can't go to Bologna, you can enjoy cucina bolognese at home with my blog - almost, for what you'll miss is the buzz of a city where they live to eat.

About Me

Marcello, my room mate in Liverpool, introduced me to Bologna, his home town. When he went back to Italy he set up a restaurant with three partners. Through him I learnt about Bologna and the place that food and eating plays in the life of the people. And, having eaten so well in his restaurant - La Locanda del Castello at Sasso Marconi, http://www.locandacastello.it/ - I decided that it would be good to share the experience with a wider audience of visitors for whom Italy means Tuscany or Rome or Sicily but rarely Bologna. My partner, Liz Cousins, agreed and proposed writing a book together, illustrated with her photos. So that's what we are doing, and this site gives you a taste of the book as it develops over the next year or so. So if Italian food and cooking is your thing, stay in touch. You will be the first to hear about pre-publication deals.